“Can liberty and equality co-exist? A jurisprudential study based on the principles of Rawls and Nozick”

Raajdwip Vardhan
National Law University and Judicial Academy
Assam, India

Volume I, Issue V, 2018

John Rawls and Robert Nozick were both colleagues, however, despite their professional similarities, the theories that the two of them develop were contradictory to each other. Rawls had argued that a principle of justice that worked on two basic lexical principles of providing the basic liberties to all, and striving for achieving social equality, although not absolute equality, in a social contract setting, can accommodate the two principles together. However, Nozick put forth the argument that the coexistence of both of these abstract entities is not possible due to their incompatibility, and any attempt to achieve equality in society by means of distributive justice shall lead to the curtailment and limitations of the liberty of the people.  

 

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